Interview - Dr Choong-Siew Yong, Chair, AMA's Public Health Committee, with Nick Grimm, ABC, 'The World Today' - Concerns over national registration of doctors' details on Internet

TANYA NOLAN: Australia's peak medical lobby is fighting a plan which it argues would see doctors' "dirty laundry" exposed on the Internet.

The proposal, which will be put to a meeting of health ministers next week, calls for a national registration scheme, making public the personal and professional details of doctors, including their medical failures.

Proponents of the plan are arguing it would help ensure patients receive the best possible level of care on offer.

As Nick Grimm reports.

GRIMM:          When you're lying on the operating table about to go under the knife, you might have one troubling thought playing on your mind as the anaesthesia takes hold and you drift towards unconsciousness.

What do you really know about that masked person holding a razor-sharp scalpel in their rubber gloved hands?

It's worries like that which could be eased, if a proposed national registration scheme for doctors takes effect sometime soon.

But doctors fear that part of the plan, which would see their personal and professional details posted on the Internet, would amount to a gross invasion of their privacy.

Doctor Choong-Siew Yong from the Australian Medical Association.

YONG:            We're concerned about the privacy implications of some of the national registration. There are other parts of the national registration scheme that we're quite happy with.

GRIMM:          So you don't oppose the national registration per se?

YONG:            Well, there's... it's not actual national registration, but it's a system of kind of harmonising registration through all the states and we're in fact supporting a lot of the proposals in this scheme.

One of the proposals that we're particularly concerned about though, is the provision of information, previously private information about doctors in the public arena.

GRIMM:          But isn't it a good thing for patients to be able to find out if their doctor has had any medical negligence problems in the past or anything like that?

YONG:            Well, if there's... some of this information is already publicly available. If a doctor has been through a disciplinary hearing, a tribunal process, then that's on the public record.

GRIMM:          The Australian Medical Association argues the national registration scheme to be considered by state and federal health ministers next week is flawed. But is it the case they simply don't want their prospective patients scared off, by accessing details of their medical malpractice lawsuits?

Dr Choong-Siew Yong again.

YONG:            Not all complaints about doctors are on the public record. Some of them... many of them are dismissed out of hand by the medical boards and those sorts of things are often vexatious.

In those instances I think it's misleading to have that kind of information publicly available without that kind of a context or understanding behind it.

GRIMM:          But Nicola Ballenden, health policy spokesperson at the Australian Consumers Association, argues that patients are entitled to know more about the people in whom they're entrusting their care.

BALLENDEN:           Well, we think consumers have a right to this sort of information. They particularly have a right to information relating to a doctor's competence.

And I mean, I think it's important to realise as well, if a doctor or a doctor's family goes to seek treatment they would find out whatever they can about the competence of that doctor. We're only asking for the same rights that doctors have for the general public.

GRIMM:          You want consumers to have the same access to information that doctors, for example, would be able to access on their professional grapevine?

BALLENDEN:           Absolutely. Doctors can find out all sorts of things about their colleagues. We would like the general public to have access to similar information.

GRIMM:                 What sort of details would you imagine would be posted on the Internet?

BALLENDEN:           Well, look, the sorts of details we would hope would be available would be things like whether or not the doctor had ever been disciplined by the medical board, for example, in a given state.

But also just general details, like their areas of interest, where they've practiced before - those sorts of things. So, general information, as well as information relating to their competence.

Ends